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FORT RILEY, Kan. — A tidal wave of soldiers, family members and Army civilians is about to strike this central Kansas post.

The 1st Infantry Division, the Army’s oldest continuously serving division, unfurled its colors here Aug. 1 after a 10-year stint in Germany, where it supported the expansion of NATO and launched deployments to the Balkans and Iraq.

The return of the Big Red One to its traditional stateside home is part of the massive worldwide shuffle of combat forces announced by the Pentagon last year.

Fort Riley, a post built in 1853 to provide security to pioneers on their way west, will become home to three ground maneuver brigades, a combat aviation brigade, a division support command and division headquarters.

Within the next three to five years, the former cavalry post will add 9,000 soldiers and at least 13,000 family members. When other related populations — Army civilians, retirees and their families — are factored in, the community supported by Fort Riley will increase from 54,000 to more than 70,000, according to Col. Thomas T. Smith, garrison commander.

That means a massive expansion project is underway to prepare for the troops.

“What we’re after is a rational and regional approach for growth over the long term,” Smith said of the project that is expected to end in 2011.

“We have banded together with the state and local counties to do this. There is a lot more involved than just adding 9,000 soldiers,” he said.

Housing construction underway

Family housing comes first and is the most critical component in the post’s expansion, according to military and civilian leaders. The location and pace of housing construction will determine when and where schools, roads, water supplies, sewer lines and other infrastructure will be built.

The post needs about 9,000 homes and apartment units, according to Smith, but the Army will add only 400 units to its inventory of 3,050 on-post quarters. So Riley officials are planning on the surrounding civilian communities to make up the difference and build at least 6,000 homes and apartments within a reasonable commuting distance.

On-post construction will also include the demolition and replacement of about 1,600 quarters and the refurbishment of 1,000 others, said Larry McGee, the post’s director of public works.

Smith said houses built through the Residential Communities Initiative will not include two-bedroom units. Under RCI, the Army partners with private developers for the rehabilitation, construction and management of on-post family housing communities.

“They all will be three- or four-bedroom,” he said. “That means soldiers looking for two-bedroom units will need to go off post.”

The Army is working with lots of entities to assist in meeting off-post housing needs, including state and local officials, and an unlikely federal agency — the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“USDA has a rural development program, and they have come to help us with our growth,” Smith said. “What they bring to the table is low-interest, no-down-payment loans,” he said.

“In the past couple of months, about $3 million in loans have been made to soldiers, and we expect that will increase because the USDA now has an office in our housing office. Soldiers can go there and get information about on-post housing, rental housing, housing referrals and the USDA program.”

The USDA program is aimed at communities with populations of 20,000 or less. That includes Junction City, which borders the post to the south, but not Manhattan, Kan., which has a population of 50,000.

Sgt. Buck Finegan, 25, recently arrived at Fort Riley from Giebelstadt, Germany, where he served as an aircraft electrician. Now a member of the 1st Infantry Division’s Combat Aviation Brigade, Finegan was pleasantly surprised at the availability of on-post quarters.

With a wife and two small children, the Springerville, Ariz., native was assigned a three-bedroom home after a one-week wait.

“We stayed in a motel in Junction City while we waited, but it was worth it. The three-bedroom house certainly is an improvement over the apartment-style Army housing we’ve had in the past,” he said.

Sgt. Judson Brant, 30, an aircraft pneudraulics repairer newly arrived from Fort Campbell, Ky., had to go off post for quarters but is pleased with the $90,000 house built in 1978 that he purchased in Junction City for his wife and two children.

“We feel very lucky, because the market is really hot there,” he said.

A fellow member of the Combat Aviation Brigade, Sgt. Anthony Malmsten, 28, also has found a home for his wife and two children. But he found it an hour’s drive away in Wilsey, where he bought a 30-acre spread with a house, barn and pond for $147,000.

The purchase allows him to bring his two horses with him, but the commute is expensive at today’s fuel prices.

“I am spending $70 every two days for fuel,” said the Apache crew chief.

Malmsten’s wife, a registered nurse, quickly found employment at a hospital in Manhattan, about an hour’s drive from the spread.

Single-soldier housing at Fort Riley stands at 5,700 spaces, 2,400 being the one-plus-one design in which soldiers have their own rooms but share bathrooms.

“We’ll be adding 600 one-plus-one units this summer and by 2011 will have 7,000, which should meet our needs,” Smith said.

Right now, the post meets 90 percent of its single-soldier housing needs, which means as the population increases, commanders probably will allow sergeants and above to receive a variable housing allowance and live off post, sources said.

Spc. Matthew Vrtis, 22, said he and other single soldiers live in temporary barracks but look forward to moving into new quarters later this year.

A native of Livonia, Mich., formerly stationed in Landstuhl, Germany, Vrtis said he is an outdoor sports enthusiast and looks forward to taking advantage of the fishing opportunities in Kansas, including nearby Milord Lake, an Army Corps of Engineers project that is the largest manmade lake in the state.

Smith said soldiers assigned to Fort Riley live in more than 100 surrounding communities, but most of the families with children concentrate in the Junction City and Geary County area.

“Of the 6,000 students in the Geary Country [school] system, about half are military children, while 30 percent of the staff are spouses of soldiers,” he said.

Schools on post are operated by Geary County, not the Defense Department, and include six elementary schools and one middle school. A $33 million bond issue passed by county voters last fall will provide for the construction of two new schools.

There are 393 slots in child development centers and on-post family care centers in individuals’ homes, according to Smith. Two interim, modular child-care centers have been set up, which will add 148 spaces to the system, for a total of 541. Two more centers will be built on post near new housing areas in 2008, but that still will leave a projected shortage of 175 spaces.

Carole Hoffman, director of the Fort Riley Development Center, said there has been steady growth in child care requirements since January, when the post population began to expand.

To make up for the projected shortage of day care slots, officials anticipate that more family care centers will be authorized on post, while the service will enthusiastically support the Army Child Care in Your Neighborhood Program, a partnering relationship with agencies in the civilian community.

The goal is to increase the availability of quality child care outside the gates of Fort Riley at fees comparable to what would be charged on post.

“It is expensive, and the regulations and requirements are hard to meet,” Smith said. “So what this corporation is trying to do is form partnerships with churches, businesses and other organizations to get this done.”

Smith emphasized that facilities established under this special program must meet the same standards as facilities on post.

On the roads

Population growth at Fort Riley is expected to add 16,000 vehicles to the region, while complicating the security concerns at access points to the post, officials said.

“The Kansas Department of Transportation has kicked in about $50 million for a four-lane road and interchange from [I-70] to the post,” said McGee, the public works director.

An $800,000 grant will fund improvements to access for the Custer Hill section of the post, where many soldiers live and work.

“We’re also going to have to expand our access points, but right now we’re waiting to see where the soldiers living off post will be concentrated, so we can adjust accordingly,” Smith said.

Staff writer Tobias Naegele contributed to this story.